The Law of Distraction
I just returned this past Tuesday from a trip to Las Vegas to attend a conference for women entrepreneurs from around the world.
I’d never been to the city of stage shows, slot machines, and strip joints before. I’m a country girl who only in the past ten years has come to appreciate the excitement and opportunities of metropolitan areas like New York City and Washington DC.
So you can imagine how wide my eyes were as the airport shuttle drove us down the Vegas strip at 12 o’clock at night with all the resort and casino lights flashing. If New York City is the city that never sleeps, then Vegas has to be its western sister. Late into the night, crowds walk the streets, moving from casino to casino, from nightclub to nightclub. And though I wasn’t up to verify this for myself, my impression was that there were people gambling at the machines and the tables around the clock.
Everywhere you looked there were billboards or video screens promising excitement and entertainment along with the chance to risk or spend your money. And while you do that, they excel at distracting you from your hunger, your thirst, your fatigue, and, most importantly, the fact that you are spending that money.
Their law of attraction is a law of distraction. If they can distract you from your worries enough to live on the promise of what MIGHT happen, then you will stay and stay and spend and spend.
This law of distraction leads us away from where the real wealth is, the real possibility for living our dreams. Their distraction leads us away from ourselves and from our creative possibilities.
Yes, it is fun to enter a land of pretend and possibility as long as we realize it is their land not ours. Yes, it can be a vacation to put our own creative endeavors to the side and be entertained by someone else’s for a while, as long as we remember to value and return to our creative projects. And yes, it is wonderful to believe that the dreams of wealth and prosperity might be ours someday, as long as we are willing to take more creative action today than pulling the arm of a slot machine.
Distractions abound at home as well—worries and responsibilities, TV and food, and even our nice soft bed. All things that can lead us away from our inner world and our creativity. So we get to choose each day—will I let myself be distracted or will I get busy attracting and creating what I want to have in my creative work and in my life?
It is not always an easy choice, especially when we are tired or discouraged.
But today I choose to take action. What about you?
November 13th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
This is so wonderfully true. The problem is that too many people are frightened of looking inward for their sustenance and are only comfortable with things that are outside, that promise nirvana through the full wallet. So sad to see. I was once trapped in Vegas for a week and was so distraught I even went to the Liberace Museum. And promised myself never again. I even sat at the slot machines until my hands turned black with the dirt of the coins that went through my hands. But, mine was a 20 dollar limit each day, which I lost, and I didn’t have the ‘bug.’ I do wonder how many people who are addicted to gambling have creative wealth that they have never acknowledged. But I also know that not everyone does.
Anyway, thanks for posting your impressions. You most definitely belong exactly where you have been planted and have bloomed so beautifully.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
For me, choice is not my friend. If I allow myself the luxury of choice, I typically pick the wrong one.
But when creative time becomes required, a habit, then there is no thinking twice about it. “Should I sit down and write” becomes “Where is my pen and my notebook?”
That said, I am careful in demanding anything from my writing time. In fact, I tell myself that when I go up to my office “I am not going to write a thing.” Then my shoulders relax, my mind softens and sure enough, the words start to flow.